What a Weekend!

This last weekend started out great! Friday after I got home from work, Ben and I went to Arby's for dinner. It was delicious, and we actually didn't make ourselves miserably full this time! Next, we went Divine Comedy. I think the best part of it was the fact that we got lots of glow sticks and candy. The skits were pretty funny, but I think I've seen better before. When we got back from that, we went to the hot tub and I even was able to convince Ben to get in the pool for a little bit with me. The water felt sooooooo good! After that we finished watching Up with Ben's roommate and his fiance, then we put in U-571. It was a great evening/night. Here are some pictures of us with our glow sticks!

Saturday came bright and early, as we both woke up around 8:30, for Ben's Chinses Club service project. We 'swept graves', and cleaned up the grounds at Provo Cemetery. We also treated ourselves to some donuts and chocolate milk before.

After the service project, we worked on homework, and had McDonald's for lunch. Ben and his roommates, DJ and Big Ben were in a ward basketball tournament at 4pm- they won of course. :-) After their game I started feeling a little weird, but thought nothing more of it then i was just outside for a long time, for the first time in a while. So I went home took a cool shower, but still felt weird. It quickly escalated into me laying on floor in pain. I even threw up multiple times. Needless to say, I was utterly miserable. Because I would only seem to throw up when my back would hurt really bad, I thought I had kidney stones. I asked Ben and Dustin to give me a blessing, which was great (I'm so thankful for the priesthood!). Then I texted my mom and told her I had kidney stones, and that I had thrown up like 6 times, and she made Ben take me to the hospital. I didn't want to go, but finally I gave in, and on the walk to the car I threw up the saltines and sprite I had just tried eating.... so I decided it was okay to go.

I got signed in and had my vitals and whatnot taken. When they asked me about my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, I said 9. Then we waited in the waiting room for a while, and when we got in a room, we waited some more. Finally I was able to get an I.V. (I was SOOOO excited for it- really), and with that I.V. I got MORPHINE! It was great! I got a CT scan but only to reveal that I had no stones. The diagnosis was then that I had gastroenteritis and unknown flank pain. I got some kind of virus that my roommates earlier in the weekend. I will say however that I have never had so much fun in the hospital. Ben and I played I-spy and it was great, except that he cheated a few times.

We didn't get back from the hospital til like 2am. I didn't sleep very well that night because my morphine had worn off, and we didn't get my prescriptions filled yet. So at about 7:50am (I woke up at like 7), I called Ben and he took me to Walgreens to fill them. We got home and I took a percocet! It was like the best sleep I have ever had- let me tell you. I love percocet! Ben was really really sweet. He was at my side the whole time I was sick, except for when he went to bed, or had to eat. He even made me soup! Overall, this weekend was an experience I don't think I will ever want to have again- well at least the pain and throwing up part.

My Birthday!

Yesterday, the 4th of April my BIRTHDAY! It was a great day! However, my birthday celebrations started on Friday. At work, there was a present sitting on my desk from Nicole, good friend, co-worker and future roommate! It was a beautiful ring! Here is a picture of it.

Next, Ben came and took me on a date! He gave me the most beautiful flowers!!! They are absolutely gorgeous and I love them! Lilies are my favorite, so he did a great job. :)

Then he took me to Red Robin, my favorite restaurant! I got my usual, Cluck's and Fries, and he got some kind of Peppercorn A1 burger which he enjoyed. Of course we couldn't leave Red Robin without cheese-sticks, so we got some of those as well! It was extremely tasty. I forgot my memory card when we went, so here are a few pictures of us after we got back.

Then Ben gave me my present. Guess what it was? A CARDIGAN! And my favorite kind, and in a color I wanted. This color is called oatmeal. and I LOVE IT!

Then on Saturday, between conference sessions, Ben, me, Nicole, and Dan went to J-dawgs and got delicious Hot Dogs. During the Priesthood session, Amy, me, Nicole, Judith, Vanessa, and Anna made tie-dye shirts! It was really cold outside, but it was a blast. Then Ben and I drove up to my Parent's house and spent the night there. We watched morning session of conference while eating cinnamon rolls and omelets, courtesy of my brother and mom! They were delicious. After the morning session, my brother, Ben, and me were able to actually go to the conference center in Salt Lake and watch the afternoon session! It was really cool, and definitely a highlight of the day.

After General Conference, we walked around Temple Square for a little bit. Here are some pictures of the Salt Lake Temple I took.

Once we got home we ate a nice Easter/birthday dinner, and opened presents, and had cake and ice-cream. I got two more Cardigans, a pair of NICE running shoes, a laptop sleeve, a new wallet, some lotion, some candy, a gift card to Smiths, and some other nice things. I also got cards from my Grandparents, and Aunt Susan. It really was a great day!

festival of COLORS!!!!

On Saturday Ben, my brother, my sister and I went to the festival of colors together! It started off with me being rather frustrated and annoyed, but soon turned into a blast! This was my 3^rd year going, and definitely not the last! I think my freshman year was the best year, mostly because we had our own bags of color to throw, but this year was great too especially because my bro an sis were with me, and Ben of course :). It was at a Hindu temple in Spanish Fork. They put this on every year as a way to welcome in the spring!

To get us started, I got some good pictures of Ben:

Now here are a few good ones of my brother Nicholas.

Here are some good ones of Taylor...

Then here are some ones of the whole gang

I gave Ben a good game...

Then I gave him a kiss on the cheek...

Then he gave me one!

We were able to successfully wash all the color out, and the next day at Church, Ben and I were matching! So here is an okay picture of us on Sunday. :)

Nerdy Appreciation

Just a warning before you begin reading, this is what I am going to call my nerd post. So if you don't want to delve into science, I would stop reading. Actually, keep reading. Even if you don't understand it all, it's okay, because you'll still get the point I'm trying to make, which is this- GOD IS GREAT! Right now my brain can't comprehend how he did everything, but he is one smart cookie. Hopefully one day I will be able to understand it all.

Right now I am in Human Physiology, and this class literally blows my brain. There are so many things that go on, just to do simple things, such as what I'm doing right now-typing! It's all about muscle contraction baby! Let me just tell you how a skeletal muscle contracts:
1. Stimulation across the myoneural junction causes an action potential in the muscle cell.
2. Action potential causes the release of calcium ions from the lateral sacs
3. the calcium then binds to troponin C which causes the tropomyosin to move aside, exposing the actin binding sites
4. Myosin binds to actin
5. ATP then binds to the myosin head causing it to detatch from the actin, the myosin head is recokced and binds repeatably (until contraction is complete this happens)
6. Calcium pump in the sarcoplasmic reticulum constantly pumps calcium out of the sarcoplasm and back into the lateral sacs.
Isn't that AMAZING???? That was just a brief explanation of it, and understanding the different parts of it would help you understand it's significance more. But still! Can you believe someone thought of all of that??? All these tiny little processes have to occur in order for us to do our everyday tasks. Unbelievable! Everytime I talk about Physiology I get really excited and I can't explain things because EVERYTHING is running through my head and I can't find the right words to explain it, or all the words get jumbled and I can't sort them out.

As many of you know, I LOVE rain. So let me just tell you how we are able to have that wondrous experience of feeling the rain on our skin.
So you feel a raindrop on your cheek lets say. This stimulus causes an action potential in the nerve cell, which then causes another action potential etc, all the way up the afferent nerve tract to the parietal lobe of the brain which is responsible for touch, pressure, cold, heat etc. The fascinating part is the action potential! When a stimulus is received it causes the voltage gated sodium channels to open and sodium to go inside the cell making it become depolarized (absolute refractory period), then the cell goes through a repolarizing phase when the sodium channels close and the potassium channels open and potassium goes out of the cell and the cell becomes polarized again (absolute refractory period). This is a simplified version as well, but HOLY COW! Does that not just knock your socks off??? There are so many teeny tiny little parts inside you that work like CRAZY and we don't even realize it! Wow. Our bodies are so incredible. God sure knew what he was doing!

One last nerdy science fact for you all, then I promise I will stop! in Physics yesterday, we figured out the force exerted on toes from the foot bone, leg bones, achilles tendon, etc. when standing on your tip toes. If you weighed 200 lb (that's how much my professor weighs... rounding down to the nearest hundredth) and you were standing on one leg on your tip toes, there is a force of 720 pounds on your toes! Wow! It makes me wonder why I still wear heels!

If you made it down to here go ahead and pat yourself on the back, or get some ice-cream because you deserve it! Okay... I can go on more, but I will spare you guys. I am just utterly flabbergasted at how our bodies function, and how God, the great celestial architect created it all. I hope you all will find a new appreciation for it as well, if you haven't already.

Little bit of Fall 09'

My family was able to get some family pictures taken. Here are a few of our favorites.





These are my roommates Ashley, Lora, Jaz, and I at one of the home football games



This is my dear friend Vanessa. We go on many picture taking adventures. :)


Here are a few pictures from BYU vs Utah game. BYU won- of course. Ashley, Amy, Joseph and I got our faces painted by Ashley. It was an awesome day. Jaz, Amy, and I were able to get our picture taken with O'Neill Chambers! Also my cousin Matt brought his baby up for my Grandpa and Grandma Green to see. She is sooo cute!






Also, Ashely's birthday was on Dec 7th (still is actually...) So we went to Tucano's to celebrate. I LOVE Ashley, and i am so thankful she is my roommate and that I got to know her. I love all my
roommates! From left to right it's Becky (who just got engaged :)), Whitney (Ashley's best friend), Amy, me, Jaz, and Lora. And of course Ashley is in the middle. And then there's Brant... haha.

My Favorite Question

So I just had a week full of midterms, and naturally I'm not feeling like doing anything productive at the moment, so I decided to write a new post. My favorite question to ask people and to ponder about myself is as follows: If you were put in prison for the rest of your life, and given only a certain amount of books, how would you use the books to make them last? My answer is that after reading them all, probably a few times, I would go through each book and count how many A's there are, B's, C's, etc. Then I could also do numbers, words, subjects, etc. Feel free to put your answer in a comment, or just to ponder the question. Maybe you can use it to break awkward silence sometime.

Well, thats all for now. I've noticed that I have been somewhat neglectful in the picture department... hopefully I'll put some up soon.

Idiosyncrasies

So, my dear friend and roommate recently got a blog, and is in turn inspiring me to give this a try again. Tonight, we are 'blogging' together and listening to our mellow music. She played one of my favorite songs from the summer by Smashing Pumpkins! It was great, because I had forgotten about that song. I love thinking about this past summer, because it was SO fun. Just me, the pool, and my captain, haha. Anyways, that will be something only she understands, but that's okay:) As I sit here thinking about what in the world to blog about or what to expose to the cyber-world, I came up with... not that much. I just ate a delisious roll, and as I was in the kitchen spreading the butter on it, I came to a conclusion- I am weird. I thought of all my idiosyncrasies and decided to write them down. So here they are:
1. I like dipping blow pops in Orange Juice
2. I like chewing cinnamon (or any) gum while drinking orange juice
3. I can't sleep in public with my eyes showing
4. I have to eat grapes a specific way (and peanut M&M's)
5. I am OBSESSED with Ireland
6. I have a not so secret crush on Michael Phelps
7. I give out about 100 personal updates a day to my roommates and close friends
8. I fall asleep best with my computer on my lap, phone in hand, backpack at my side
9. I eat cheese in cubes (as opposed to blocks or slices)
10. When i wash my face at night, I do it in the tub rather than the sink
11. I love the smell of gasoline, sharpies, paint, and rubber cement
12. I have extremely flexible fingers
13. I can make a three leaf clover with tongue

.... That's all I can think of right now, I probably have a lot more but this is all for now.